By: Maida Salkanović
In a July 2023 interview with Sputnik Serbia, Serbian doctor-turned-politician Branimir Nestorović referenced a pornographic movie allegedly featuring German politician Annalena Baerbock to criticize the ‘decadent West’ and its ‘amoral’ women in politics. However, the images in question, part of a smear campaign, were actually of Russian model Martina Mink. Despite having been debunked long ago, these false claims continue to target Baerbock.
This example highlights the blatant types of gender-based disinformation that are often identified and addressed by fact-checkers. However, subtler kinds of disinformation about women’s abilities, accomplishments, and societal roles persist in education, media, and across all spheres of society. These more insidious forms have often been normalized to such an extent that they are hard to identify. Some fact-checkers in Southeast Europe are working on uncovering them.
Tijana Cvjetićanin, a pioneer in fact-checking gender-based disinformation in Southeast Europe (SEE), fondly recalls working on this topic. During 2018 and 2019 she was an editor at the international project FemFacts, which was dedicated to checking the accuracy and objectivity of media coverage of women and women’s issues in the European media.
“I believe it was truly valuable in that it focused specifically on gender-based disinformation, which was rare at the time. Such projects are still rare, especially those systematically addressing gender-based disinformation, while the campaigns that use disinformation to target women’s rights, reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights do that in a very systematic way which requires an adequate response,” she commented to SEE Check.
Implicit Bias in Media and Technology
Cvjetićanin believes that disinformation arises from both explicit and implicit biases, encompassing both orchestrated campaigns and deeply ingrained beliefs about sex and gender harmful to society. As an example of the latter, she points to the tendency of many media outlets to attribute the accomplishments of women scientists to men. She explored this issue in her Fem Facts article “A Scientist? Must Be a Man!,” which detailed numerous instances where journalistic articles on scientific research misgendered the authors. Cvjetićanin attributes this to an unconscious bias where journalists in the SEE region automatically assume scientists are men.
“If the gender is not easily recognizable in the ‘foreign’ names, for instance, if they are not from the Anglo-Saxon or Indo-European linguistic canon, journalists would sometimes translate them all as male. This isn’t classic disinformation, but it is a distortion of facts and it affects the accuracy of the information reaching people,” she explained to SEE Check.
Women’s accomplishments have long been obscured by language, a trend that continues in modern technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI), and specifically large language models (LLMs), have surged in popularity in the past few years. Unsurprisingly, AI often reflects societal stereotypes and prejudices. A November 22, 2023, article in Scientific American presented research indicating that ChatGPT replicates gender bias in recommendation letters.
“The training data used to develop LLMs are often biased because they’re based on humanity’s historical written records – many of which have depicted men as active workers and women as passive objects,” the article states.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that in gendered languages, ChatGPT defaults to male forms in translation and text generation. This sends a wrong picture in the world about what women can – and have – accomplished.
The social impact of gender-based disinformation is both harmful and immense, said Brigita Miloš, a professor at University of Rijeka, Croatia, who focuses on the gender aspect of cultural studies.
“Gender-based disinformation can shape perceptions of women, impacting their integrity, self-perception, self-esteem, and can manifest as discrimination or marginalization in various social settings, such as at work, during job search, or in political and business environments,” she told SEE Check.
Who Profits from Spreading Gender-based Disinformation?
Non-intentional gender-based disinformation, driven by implicit bias, can cause great harm, even if that was not its main goal. Deliberate campaigns, on the flip side, disseminate gender-based disinformation explicitly against women’s interests. Tijana Cvjetićanin gives an example of gender-based disinformation being used directly in service of specific right-wing ideologies.
“These are political narratives that present themselves as a fight against ‘gender ideology,’ defense of family values, and similar. This is in itself a manipulative misnaming game with a paradox at its very core, where patriarchal views of sexuality or gender are proclaimed to be ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ and all other views of gender are claimed to be an ‘ideology’ to make them look threatening and fit them into right-wing political narratives or conspiracy theories. But, of course, patriarchy is a gender ideology par excellence and calling such views ‘anti gender ideology’ is absurd,” she said.
Nađa Bobičić, a researcher at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, who studies anti-gender movements in Serbia, told SEE Check how these movements, which include religious and right-wing intellectual elites, operate in Serbia.
“These groups devise and spread disinformation content using all available media, showing great adaptability,” she said. These movements, Bobičić explains, infiltrate society through various organizations and initiatives, such as parents’ groups on social networks and different citizens’ associations. The influence of these movements extends to various societal levels and demographics and is used to advance specific agendas.
In a joint email, Iva Zelić and Josip Šipić from GenderFacts, the fact-checking initiative by the Croatian web portal Libela, expressed their views that anti-gender movements and their associated stakeholders often build their legitimacy by spreading various forms of gender-based disinformation. “This strategy mobilizes citizens for their initiatives, which often negatively impact the rights of minority groups and women,” they stated.
These actors exploit pre-existing beliefs and emotions about gender, as people are very passionate about this topic, Bobičić observes. She notes that a conservative approach to gender is normalized in society, from the colors designated for boys and girls to their fields of education and work. However, economic motivations often underpin the spread of gender-based disinformation.
“We should view all of this in the context of capitalist elites who have an interest in supporting these policies so that people focus on gender equality instead of dealing with issues such as inflation,” thinks Bobičić.
She states that women are still paid less and still do the majority of the unpaid housework.
“All these gender distinctions, which may seem purely cultural, have very direct implications for who does which job, how much they will be paid, underpaid, or unpaid for the same work. This, at the higher level of discussion and discourse, then frames a fear of gender,” she believes.
Zašto ne (Why Not), Tijana Cvjetićanin’s organization, published a study on gender-based disinformation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) in March of this year. The study analyzed 71 articles containing gender-based disinformation disseminated in the media and on social networks over the past three years. It outlined several specific categories of gender-based disinformation.
Nerma Šehović-Kašić, one of the study’s authors, shared her insights on the financial motivations behind gender-based disinformation.
“A finding that prompted my reflection was the creation and dissemination of gender-based disinformation for financial gain. It was both disappointing and concerning to see how disinformation targeting women is frequently used to attract audiences to websites and engage in clickbait,” she told SEE Check.
Another overlooked consequence of gender-based disinformation concerns health. This study reveals perilous but widespread health disinformation concerning women.
“Mostly, these posts targeted women, and the content of such posts often portrayed certain medical treatments and examinations, such as human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines and mammography, as very dangerous. The prevalence of such disinformation indicates a need for more comprehensive education about women’s health,” said Šehović-Kašić, adding that disinformation can significantly affect our attitudes and understanding of the issues faced by women and members of the LGBTIQ+ community.
These types of campaigns can have long-reaching consequences. “Apart from undermining the quality of life and health of individuals, gender-based disinformation and gender aspects of information disorder discredit the efforts and achievements of gender equality policies in a way that gender disinformation with its dissemination can shape cultural norms or values based on problematic traditional and patriarchal gender patterns,” Brigita Miloš said.
Bobičić concludes that while these movements are ideologically diverse, they share the same fundamental values and, most importantly, a common opposition. The primary link between anti-gender movements is their explicit opposition to gender and the freedoms associated with that concept.
Efforts against Gender-based Disinformation
There are many efforts by fact-checkers to address gender-based disinformation. Organizations like the Spanish Maldita, with their section Maldito Feminismo, focus specifically on this issue. Others occasionally address it as part of their regular activities.
For instance, Serbian fact-checker Raskrikavanje debunked the myth that women are less intelligent than men, and Fake News Tragač addressed the stereotype that women are less skilled drivers. These falsehoods are pervasive in popular culture and can significantly impact women, especially young girls who have not yet developed confidence in their abilities.
Recognizing the issue, the Novi Sad School of Journalism, which publishes Fake News Tragač, launched the project “Equally and Truthfully: Deconstructing Gender Disinformation in the Media.” The project’s goal is to raise awareness about gender disinformation and its role in reinforcing societal inequalities. It also aims to enhance journalists’ abilities to fact-check and analyze gender-directed disinformation.
Valentina Sigeti, the project’s leader, told SEE Check that researching and deconstructing gender-based disinformation is crucial because, like other disinformation, it represents information disorders that are contrary to the fundamental principles of the journalistic profession, which is characterized by truthful reporting.
“It’s essential to research gender-based disinformation also because it confirms prejudices about women and gender minorities. The media play a crucial role in reinforcing and validating existing audience views. Therefore, if journalists are not sensitized and educated to recognize gender-based disinformation and inform the public about it, we are left with a public space filled with narratives that harm certain groups. Public interest dictates that journalists report in the interest of all people in society, regardless of their personal characteristics. Considering the ethics code, journalists should not only deconstruct gender-based disinformation but also consider it their duty,” she said.
One of the efforts with a dedicated section for gender disinformation comes by the aforementioned Croatian feminist web portal Libela. Over the past ten years, Libela has brought together activists, experts, and journalists who have written about issues such as a woman’s right to choose, violence against women and gender minorities, economic equality for women, and migrations, which provided a solid base for them to start GenderFacts. This initiative started with a call for proposals to establish a system for checking the accuracy of information by the Croatian Agency for Electronic Media as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Iva Zelić and Josip Šipić from GenderFacts said in an email to SEE Check that “gender disinformation represents an attack on fundamental values such as human rights – especially the rights of women and minority groups in society – and gender equality, undermining democratic processes.” They also noted that such disinformation “harms the health, safety, and social position of women and LGBTIQ+ people.”
The Need for Specialized Fact-Checkers and Collaborative Networks
Zelić and Šipić observed that there are no fact-checkers dealing specifically with gender on a national level, and there is a lack of such initiatives on a regional, European, and global level. “We believe that a higher number of sector-specific fact-checkers dealing with gender disinformation should be encouraged,” they said, emphasizing the need for a network of fact-checkers focused on this topic.
Brigita Miloš also underscored the importance of studying gender-based disinformation to better understand, identify, and apply prevention mechanisms against gender-based violence and hatred. She too suggested that researchers could benefit from national, regional, and broader networking into joint platforms to form common definitions, compile strong fact-checking databases, and perform comparative analyses of detected anti-gender narratives.
“Empowering by connecting would result in extremely valuable joint work that would significantly benefit the community. Such efforts could also complement modern societies’ endeavors to increase general media literacy,” Miloš concluded.
The benefits of such networks are clear, as they facilitate the sharing of experiences and best practices. “On one hand, experiences shared within the network from organizations that have faced specific disinformation campaigns would make recognizing and preventing those campaigns in other organizations and countries simpler. On the other hand, examples of good practice within the network would enable suppression in countries just beginning to face specific disinformation narratives related to gender,” stated Zelić and Šipić.
The efforts to combat gender-based disinformation are crucial for advancing gender equality and protecting women’s rights. Researchers, authors, and activists are working tirelessly on exposing the disinformation that has long limited women’s opportunities, interests, and confined them to domestic roles. Detecting and clarifying gender-based disinformation is a Herculean task, requiring significant time, energy, and resources. However, there is a growing awareness and willingness to undertake this essential work. The challenge now is to bring together the pieces of the puzzle to create an effective system for detecting and combating gender-based disinformation in Southeast Europe. A coordinated and collaborative approach seems to be the best way forward.
